Wine, cheese, chocolate and more wine

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Dec 13th - Dec 15th

The world famous Margaret River region has over 100 wineries to explore not to mention chocolate shops, gourmet cheese producers, a fudge factory, ice creameries and breweries. It would be easy to spend a few days there (with a designated driver of course) ambling from one cellar door to the next stopping off for lunch by the river and gorging yourself on amazing chocolates. We chose to do an all day Bushtucker wine tour which turned out to be a lot of fun with a great group of people and ended at 11pm in a bar after a few songs on the karaoke.

This wine tour was a lot different than the one in New Zealand. It was very laid back and a great laugh with everyone on the trip (there were 21 of us) being encouraged to swap seats after every winery so we could get to know each other. It also included a ‘bushtucker’ lunch served at one of the wineries which involved smoked kangaroo (not very tasty) and some bush fruits (quite bitter). For the more adventurous there was also the chance to try a witchetty grub. These are the wriggly things that look like giant maggots that z-list celebs are forced to eat on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ Simon was brave enough to give it a go. Thankfully these grubs were dead and being divided between nine people. Goo was dripping down Simon’s fingers from his section of grub before he had chance to put it in his mouth. It looked pretty vile and by the look on his face after he put it in his mouth didn’t taste much better. He described it as being very bland with a slimy oozy texture. At least kangaroo testicles weren’t on the menu.

We went to four wineries on our tour one of which has a restaurant near Reading - Woody Nook at Woodcote - which we will have to visit when we get back to the UK. Besides the wineries we also had some shooters at a liqueur place and enjoyed a cold beer on a balcony overlooking the river and vines at a brewery. To soak up some of the alcohol we went to a cheese shop which did a lovely herby cheddar and a chocolate shop where we sampled white, milk and dark pastilles before splurging on a few individual chocolates. As the tour came to a close a group decision was made to continue the drinking at a pub in Margaret River town and en route the tour guide’s microphone was commandeered for some bus karaoke. It was a great day and night and we were glad that by a stroke of luck we had the four-bed dorm to ourselves for our three night stay at Surf Point backpackers so we were able to sleep off our hangovers in peace.

• This doesn’t really fit in with the wine tour but during our drive from Perth to Margaret River we saw a huge plume of smoke, probably from one of the many bushfires that Australians have to deal with, although I could find nothing about this one on the news sites. It was enormous and was obviously hundreds of miles away but we had it in our eye line for a large chunk of our drive. Along the roads there are fire warning signs which give the risk of fire for the day, they are usually set to ‘extreme‘.
  

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Photos

Witchetty grub
Tasty

Sunset at Prevelly Beach
We stayed near this beach at Margaret River